In this blog you will see a journey being taken by students and teacher to build up our minds, muscles and imaginations together through inquiry, exploration, investigation, problem solving and teamwork!

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Saturday, May 14, 2016

Every year I introduce my class to poetry and every year they love it! They also love to write it. It gives them a fresh, new reason to write! I start out by immersing them in poetry. The one that always ends up being their favorite is All the Small Poems and Forteen More by Valerie Worth.

This book teaches them that they can look at anything, even the most simple thing like grass, the sky, a rock, or a pencil, and see it so clearly if they look at it with "poet's eyes." They realized that they could write a poem about anything!

For the next twelve years, they will most likely be told what type of poems they have to write. I just want them to write poems freely without any restrictions. I expose them to list poems, I Like... poems, metaphors, picture poems, haikus, poems with rhythm and poems with rhymes. We talk about how these poems can inspire their own poetry. I love reading their poems and seeing how each child is inspired by different styles of poetry. I also loved reading about the different subjects they would write about. Some were so sad they brought tears to my eyes about real life situations. Some were about happy memories and some were about random things just like Valerie Worth.

The kids wrote poems for about two weeks and then made their own personal poetry treasuries to take home. They read their poetry books over and over! I asked if they would like to present their poems to our families. That is when the planning for our Poetry Cafe started. They decided they wanted snacks and drinks and some wanted to make the room "pretty." They voted for sugar cookies for a snack. I volunteered to also bring some popcorn.

This group has been exploring herbs (which will be another blog post) so we decided to make water with some lemon and our Spearmint plant.

Cooking with 25 kids by myself was a very interesting experience, (in the past I've always had an assistant) but we got it done! We made the lemon-mint water first.

The kids love to take pictures of things that they create, but about four kids asked if they could take pictures of the process as we made our cookies and lemon-mint water. Here are some of the moments and things they thought were important through their photos as we made the water. They would even stand on chairs to get a different perspective. They watch me too much!

We made the cookies next. I usually have the kids make everything homemade but without help and since we were pressed for time, I pushed the easy button and used a mix! I love this sugar cookie mix!! It's my favorite!

Here is the documentation of the process from the kids point of view with their photos.

I pulled out all of my flowers so a group could make arrangements.

We also made a poetry banner. They wanted to use the colors that were in their favorite painting Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh.

I hung it up in a prominent spot and used its color inspiration as a backdrop for our "Welcome to our poetry cafe" sign.

We practiced reading our poems in our books and then set them out on the tables along with the flowers.

We displayed our lemon-mint water with the recipe and a graph showing who liked the lemon-mint water and who didn't.

We also created a snack table. The kids made labels for everything. They even made signs without me knowing about it saying "Eat Here" and put them on all the tables in our room! I also enjoyed the "Get food here" sign someone made and stuck on the snack table. These are examples of purposeful writing. They write for these reasons without thinking writing is a hard thing. They just do it naturally because they feel it is needed.

Each friend picked their favorite poem to share for the poetry reading part of our cafe. They had a podium and a microphone, and I put their poem up on the promethium board so the families could see it also as they read it.

After the reading, the kids took their families to their tables to read their Poetry books and Space books to them. Then they took them around the room open house style to show them all of the space projects they have worked on. After that they got to mingle and enjoy some snacks and drinks together.

I love doing this each year! It is a great way for us to build community and let the kids show all that they have done! You could see how proud they were to put this on for their families! It was very meaningful and purposeful for them all! That's how the best learning takes place!

Stay tuned for the next blog post where I will blog about our space inquiry!

When my son was in Kindergarten, he made this and gave it to me for Mother's Day. I cried because it was so beautiful and captured his childhood innocence so perfectly!

I decided then that I wanted every mother or special person in their lives to feel the same joy I felt when I opened that precious gift!

They posed for the picture holding flowers for their mom. They loved posing for these pictures and I loved how they would help each other into the fancy, grownup clothes.

The glued pasta to wooden frames I purchased at Michaels. The more pasta, the better these look!

I used a photo app called Colorblast to make the pictures black and white and give the flowers a pop of color.

I spray painted the frames the shiniest silver I could find. They put their pictures into the silver pasta frame and glued a sweet poem on the back.

The kids made cards by creating heart shaped loose part art and photographing it. I got this idea from Stimulating Learning with Rachel. I highly recommend you check out her blog and Instagram account at @stimulatinglearningwithrachel!

They used watercolors to create beautiful gift bags.

Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the finished gift bags with the card attached. I hope my class moms loved these gifts and that it brought them as much joy as mine did! Someday, sooner than they think, they will be looking at these with tears eyes as they plan their child's graduation party just like I am right now for my son! Happy Mother's Day!

I am a Kindergarten Teacher for West Carrollton City Schools (West Carrollton, Ohio, U.S.). I have taught kindergarten for 24 years. In this blog, you will see both teacher and students on a journey to build up our minds, muscles, and imaginations through inquiry, investigation, exploration, problem solving and teamwork. We learn together through a project/inquiry and play based learning environment. I have been on a journey from a traditional, thematic based teaching style to a more student-led, project/inquiry and play based teaching style. The more I learn from all of you wonderful teachers around the world, the more fun I am having inquiring, exploring and learning along side my students. I hope that this blog will be an inspiration for those of you thinking about doing the same.